Criminal case opened against left-wing leader

The houses of the persons involved are being searched

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MOSCOW, October 17 (Itar-Tass) — The chief investigatory directorate of the Russian Investigative Committee has launched a criminal case against Left Front coordinator Sergei Udaltsov, his aides Leonid Razvozzhayev, Konstantin Lebedev and other persons after checking facts stated in the documentary film “Anatomy of a Protest 2”, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin reported on Wednesday.

According to him, the criminal case was launched under part 1 of Article 30 and part 1 of Article 212 of the Russian Criminal Code – “preparations for organizing mass riots” in Moscow and in other Russian regions.

He said a phonoscopic expertise of video materials received from NTV television had been made and no signs of editing had been revealed.

“It was established that the voice, including in items filmed by a hidden CCTV camera, belongs to Udaltsov, while the meeting segments of which are shown in the film, took place in the second half of June 2012 in living quarters in Minsk, the capital of the Republic of Belarus,” he said.

“Taking part in the meeting from the Georgian side were the chairman of the Georgian parliamentary committee for defense and security, Givi Targamadze, Georgian Consul in Moldova Mikhail Iashvili as well as three of their aides. The Russian participants in the meeting were Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, his aide Konstantin Lebedev and Leonid Razvozzhayev, the aide to State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomaryov,” Markin added.

The houses of the persons involved are being searched, Markin said.

Answering investigators’ questions on October 11, Udaltsov himself denied that he had discussed with Georgian nationals issues connected with organizing unlawful actions in Russia. During the questioning he confirmed the fact of contacts in the summer of 2012 with Georgian nationals he had not identified, calling one of them Georgy Vassilyevich, but stated that he had only wanted to find sources of legal financing for the Left Front movement. Lebedev and Razvozzhayev were also summoned to the Investigative Committee on that day, but they did not show up.

Sergei Udaltsov is prepared to take a polygraph test to answer the investigator’s questions, his lawyer, Violetta Volkova, said.

Udaltsov was questioned by an Investigative Committee investigator within the framework of a preliminary probe into claims contained in the “Anatomy of a Protest 2”.

The lawyer said Udaltsov denied he was acquainted with the chairman of the Georgian parliament’s defense and security committee Givi Targamadze. The authors of the documentary claimed that Udaltsov and Targamadze had discussed the Russian Opposition’s activities and its financing from outside the country.

The second part of the controversial film “Anatomy of Protest” appeared on NTV on Friday, October 5. Its authors exposed mechanisms used for providing funding to the so-called non-system opposition in Russia. They claimed that some funding could be provided by former Bank of Moscow CEO Andrei Borodin through Givi Targamadze, former head of the defense and security committee in the Georgian parliament. According to the authors of the film, Sergei Udaltsov was one of the actors in spurring the protest movement in the country.